Switching banks is now faster for customers

13 September 2016

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It’s now faster to switch banks, according to a new analysis from the Danish Bankers Association and e-nettet, a Danish company that is responsible for banks’ joint infrastructure for transferring customer accounts.

The number of exposure transfers that are currently being processed has now reached a level that is under the fixed objective of 13,800 ongoing cases. Hence, just now there are 12,056 ongoing exposure transfers from one financial institution to another.

“We are pleased that we have now reached the target figure that we set for ourselves in the sector. This is a result of the huge effort from banks that have worked purposefully to reduce the piles of paper, after a difficult start in 2014 with several cases of child illness. Although changing banks now happens faster than before, there will still be individual cases, where we must admit that a bank change-over may take a long time, but the majority of customers will experience reasonable change-over times,” says the Director for Digitisation, Michael Busk-Jepsen.

Simple casesFor cases that only concern simple deposit accounts, it now takes on average 7.28 days to change banks.

“When customers want to change banks, it is, of course, preferable that this happens as quickly as possible,” Michael Busk-Jepsen says.´

Complex casesIn addition to moving simple deposit accounts, which make up half of all transfers, there are also the more complicated cases. These cases take longer than 18 days.

“A complex case can, for example, concern a family with three children that have different terms of notice in relation to their loans and deposits and different dependencies in relation to Direct Debit agreements, insurance agreements, fixed transfers, pension agreements, custodies, safety deposit boxes and children’s savings accounts,” Michael Busk-Jepsen says.

“In a situation like this, with a wide variety of agreements, it will take longer before the change-over is finalised and completed. All the same, it is here that we have seen the biggest improvement in the past year and these change-overs now take 63.68 days, compared with 72.8 days last year,” he continues.

The process time for all completed cases is on average 40.68 days. When the figures were added up last summer the level was 43 days. We see this as a positive development.e-engagementThe switch from one bank to another is carried out via e-engagement, which has been developed by e-nettet. e-engagement has contributed to exposure transfers being carried out at a continually improving speed since 2014.

“e-engagement had a difficult start in 2014, as the solution led to digitising previously manual tasks in financial institutions. But it is good to see that e-engagement has been well received in the sector, as well as the fact that the original goal for e-engagement has now been reached,” says the Managing Director of e-nettet, Jørn Knudsen.

“We are delighted that it is now faster for customers to switch financial in-stitution. This is the reason why we created e-engagement together with banks. And we are continually working on developing the system so that it can become even faster in the future,” Jørn Knudsen says.

Background: About e-engagemente-engagement is the system used by Danish banks and financial institu-tions, when customers wish to change their financial institution. Via e-engagement, the sending and receiving financial institutions can i.e. share information about transfer requests, transfer acceptances, start a dialogue and receive transfer notes with information about transferred products. e-engagement has been in operation since 7 April 2014.

Denmark is one of the few countries in the world that has a digital system that supports exposure transfers across the sector. e-engagement is devel-oped and maintained by e-nettet, which is the financial sector’s project and management company.

For further informationContact Head of Media Relations at the Danish Bankers Association, Stine Luise Hansen by phone: +45 3016 1009 or Head of Marketing and Commu-nications at e-nettet, Rikke Bøye Pedersen, by phone: +45 4195 5360